It was another fascinating evening at Huckletree D2 for November’s Data Science Ireland meetup, as our guests were treated to yet more world-class presentations.

This month’s meetup was in association with Alldus AI Workforce Solutions. We were delighted to have Alldus on board with us for the meetup and would like to say a big thank you to their team for their sponsorship and providing us with the delicious pizza.

First up, Bart Lehane told us all about the success of EdgeTier, who develop cutting-edge AI applications that move contact centres into a new era of efficiency and performance. He told us about their automated agent assistant ‘Arthur’ who uses AI and machine learning to work seamlessly with customer service agents to answer customer queries more efficiently and accurately, yet retaining a personal touch for every customer.

A lot of people believe the future of customer service lies with an army of bots that will understand everything you say and instantly providing you with all of the information you need. Bart showed that while a combination of Natural Language Processing, word embeddings and neural networks will make classification accuracy of over 95% possible on customer queries, customer service will also need that human touch.

Customer Service will take on a Human + AI approach as while AI is excellent for automating the repetitive tasks, transactions and information gathering, we the human are needed to understand the logic, show empathy and the negotiations. Robots will not take our jobs in the customer service world, but rather it will be a combination of the nuance of human communication with the speed and accuracy of AI and automation.

From one successful company to another, Luca Boschin discussed how “focus” helped LogoGrab‘s growth. LogoGrab’s logo detection API service monitors logos and branding in images and video, alerting companies when their image appears somewhere and providing them with how well their marketing is going. They work with some of the world’s most innovative tech companies, including eBay.

The AI is a mysterious jungle and there is a lot of hype as to where it is heading in the future? However, Logograb saw a lot of startups come and go since they were set up in 2012 but they lived by focusing on a specific challenge: Doing more with less data to exactly the kind of problem what a startup in the field could solve with a clever idea.

With this mind, Logograb focused on adding value through social media monitoring, sports sponsorship monitoring, brand safety & counterfeit detection and visual data monetization. Logograb plan to distribute a focused algorithm through their partnerships and build a product on top of this algorithm. Focus on what you are good at and do it well, there is no reason you can be a success. Less is more!

Last but not least, AI Ireland’s own Mark Kelly discussed what he learned from interviewing 100 leaders across the world for the AI in Action podcast. From innovations in Ireland such as voice recognition for eCommerce, the future of driving and facial recognition for cows to other incredible breakthroughs around the world such as AI Debaters, paintings & photographs created by AI and even robot Formula One drivers.

There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence is creating a third technological wave and not one industry will be left untouched by AI and Data Science. AI Ireland and the AI Awards was set up to increase public awareness of AI and as other countries develop a national strategy, we hope Ireland will follow suit as there is no doubt the island of Ireland is making some groundbreaking developments in AI.

More and more businesses are making this shift and with the growing demand for data scientists and AI Engineers, this inspired Mark and his partners to set up Alldus AI Workforce Solutions. The Alldus team is going above and beyond the traditional staffing company with meetups, podcasts and mentoring to help both clients and candidates make sure they achieve success as AI transforms the very nature of work.

Thank you to the guys at Huckletree once again for hosting us at their fantastic venue. We also would like to say a big thank you to Bart, Mark and Luca for their incredible presentations and to all our guests who came along last Wednesday evening. I hope you all took plenty away from our three brilliant speakers to assist you on your career path in AI and Data Science.

We hope to see you all again at the next one on Wednesday 5 December at Huckletree D2. Speakers will be revealed in the coming weeks but you can now register and RSVP to book your seat at the 10th Data Science Ireland meetup.

AI Awards 2018: Limited Tickets Remaining
Connecting Ireland’s AI ecosystem for a higher purpose

The excitement levels keep rising by the day as we are now just 10 days away from the inaugural AI Awards, which takes place the Gibson Hotel on Thursday 22 November as we celebrate the great work being done in AI on the island of Ireland.

The AI Awards, in conjunction with principal sponsor Microsoft, is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to promoting, advancing and rewarding corporate and academic excellence in Artificial Intelligence (AI) innovation, research & development and products.

It is our mission to support the AI community by recognising the hard work and dedication of those working in the field and to help promote and market Ireland globally as the first-choice home for AI investment and job creation in research and product development.

There are limited tickets remaining so click here now to get your tickets for the 2018 AI Awards